Page 68 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

Shep nods to Anna and says, “Yeah, that one there has a lot to unpack, we’ll catch up later. Doing chicken piccata tonight.”

“My fav!”

I yell over my shoulder, “The list is your fault, Shep. You’re the one who said I had to do something for my soul.”

He slides back underneath and I hear him say, “We all should from time to time.”

Chapter 32

The Tree

ZANE

Dhaka, Bangladesh

The wifi in this hotel is either very fast or completely absent depending on which corner of the room I stand in. I’ve been in the window corner for three hours trying to build something that should not be this complicated.

It’s a blog. Which is maybe the most 2009 sentence I’ve ever thought. But it’s easier than building an actual site, and what I need is simple, a place that’s ours. Not the show, not my socials, not a text chain that lives on a phone I sometimes leave in cabs. A room with a door so to speak.

Liesel thinks the name is embarrassing, don’t give a shit.

Katydid&Squire

Then it asks for a password. I stare at the screen longer than is reasonable for a grown man choosing a password.

I finally come up with the perfect one.

I spend another forty minutes on the layout, which is not something I expected to care about but apparently do. It needs to look like something we’d both use. Not precious, not corporate, not the aesthetic of someone who thinks about their aesthetic. Something that looks like a hotel notepad and a gin and tonic and a lot of miles on a pair of Chuck Taylors.

I settle on the simplest template they have and stop fussing with it.

Rana Park is not what I expected. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s basically a city park with muddy paths, benches and people moving through their mornings. The difference is the light. Low angle, coming through the canopy and turning the air between the trees into something almost solid. She would know exactly where to stand in it. She would know without thinking.

It takes me forty minutes to find a place to film that captures this park that people claim is magic. I find a tree that says, I’ve been here longer than anything else in this place and I’ll be here longer than anything that comes along.

I stand under it for a while as Bill sets up the shot. It’s on the edge of a little lake and it’s creepy and marvelous all at once. I take out my knife.

The bark is pale where I cut into it, fresh and bright against the gray-brown of the outer layer. I carve a Z slowly. Three connecting lines, the way I’ve been signing things since I was twelve years old. It’s not deep and I’m sure the tree will absorb it but I felt like being a part of its journey through time.

Back at the hotel I take out a real postcard from the lobby rack.

Dhaka at dusk, more romantic than it is in daylight

Kat

Found a tree worth keeping. Carved my name into it so it doesn’t forget me. Or I don’t forget it. One of those.

The light here does something to the air. You’d know how to photograph it. You’d know exactly where to stand.

—Z

Then I tuck it into the envelope with the others I wrote. And I hand it to the concierge to ship to her mom’s house because I don’t know where she is. And I’m finding I don’t like that. Or that she has no clue where I am.

I open the laptop and pull up the Katydid&Squire blog.

I’ve been on television for four years, and I’ve never had trouble finding something to say. I want her to have a post when she figures this out. What I wrote on that postcard won’t be seen for at least a week but if I do this right, she could be “talking back” to me by this evening. If it’s working.

Dhaka.